I can’t be the only one right? I mean, if it’s a choice between making pancakes at 6:30 am, or 10 pm, apparently I’m the kind of person who chooses 10 pm. “I’m just trying to be organized”, and “I’m just trying to get ahead of things by a day or two”. Really? Truth is that I’m just not a morning person, and making pancakes before coffee is just not really a thing for me. “But why pancakes?” I hear you ask. Yes, there are less labor intensive breakfast options. But pretty much nothing makes my little man as happy as pancakes, as you may remember from my baby pancakes post. Seriously, he does this happy squeaking noise and this face that we affectionately call “cheese face” (because he also loves cheese enough to do the face), and there’s nothing that makes my morning like that face. So here I am, almost 10:15 at night, just waiting for the pancakes to cool so that I can put them in the fridge for the morning.

Way back before I had a baby, I used to do a “low-carb” type thing after the holidays until I’d lost the extra weight. No bread, white potatoes, white rice, pasta… It doesn’t sound that much fun, but it does the trick, along with calorie counting and working out. Along the way I’ll admit I got bored of kale chips and baked egg cups, and I decided that low carb might not be as important as “better carb”, at least on occasion, as long as those pesky calories still got counted! So I went digging, and found what has turned out to be one of my family’s favorite breakfasts – oat pancakes. I can’t remember where I found the original recipe from, but I do remember that it took some locating. Between all the “grind the oats, then… then… then…” or the list of odd ingredients that seem to so frequently accompany gluten free or other “healthy” recipes, it seemed like I would have to give up on the idea of simple, fluffy pancakes. Until I found what seemed to good to be true. 4 ingredients, all of them completely normal, and a blender. Done! Since then, I’ve experimented with a few variations, and all of them have been surprisingly successful. The one caveat I will make is that these are not sweetened. At all. You could do if you wanted to, I’m sure. I just haven’t done it, and personally have felt no need to. I normally like my pancakes with fruit, and my husband would cover his in syrup either way, so it hasn’t even come up for us.

One batch is typically about right for one person. At least, one fully grown person. Or my toddler. OK, slight exaggeration. He normally eats 1/4 to 1/2 a batch, depending on how hungry he is. The rest keep well in the fridge for a couple of days, and I’m pretty sure they’d freeze well between pieces of parchment paper. I’ll let you know if/when I get around to making enough to try that. I like to make these in a non-stick pan (which will eventually be a non-stick griddle, when our house eventually gets finished!), and I’ve found that by doing that, you don’t need any oil at all. The oil actually made them a little worse. Not bad, just not as good.

For 1 person: put 1 egg, 1/2 cup oats, 1/4 cup milk and 1/2 tsp baking powder in a blender, and blend until smooth. Leave to rest for at least 5 minutes, to give the baking powder a chance to activate. (If you cook them too early, the first ones will be a little flat, but they’ll still be OK). Heat pan on low-medium heat. Pour or ladle in batter to required size and cook for a few minutes. You’ll know when the first side is done, because it will release easily from the pan. If it’s sticking, it isn’t done yet. I speak from experience… You can also look for the large air bubbles – they’re usually a decent indicator that it’s almost ready to flip. Flip the pancakes, and cook on the other side for 1-2 minutes. Done!

You can make pretty much any variation of these that you want. Just add whatever extra ingredients you want after blending. So far we’ve tried blueberry, chocolate chip, cranberry/orange and lemon/poppy seed, all of which worked really well. I’ve also used these as a way to hide vegetables – not from my toddler, but from my 41 year-old husband. Really. Just add 1/2-1 zucchini to the blender, and they’ll never know the difference. I hope you enjoy them!

Super easy oat pancakes

Ingredients

1 egg

1/2 cup oats

1/4 cup milk

1/2 tsp baking powder

Directions

Blend all ingredients until smooth. Leave to rest for at least 5 minutes.

Heat non-stick pan over low-medium heat.

Pour or ladle batter into pan. Cook for 3-5 minutes, until large bubbles appear and the pancake releases easily from the pan.

To easily be used to hide vegetables from your toddler or husband(!) – add 1/2 – 1 zucchini or other squash to blender with other ingredients. Alternatively, add winter squash (pumpkin, butternut, acorn etc) or sweet potato puree to the blender.

Make your own chalkboard key hook from a picture frame and some paint!

Do you ever feel like you’re running just to catch up with your own life? That’s how I’ve felt since about July. Between being a full time mom to a now toddler, part time teaching and having a house built, I feel like I’ve barely had a moment to breathe for the last 6 months. Hence, no posting for some time. Which makes me very sad… 😦

My husband and I starting looking for a house about a year ago, and all was going well until he decided that the only thing he really wanted was a brand new house. As in, built from scratch brand new. I wasn’t opposed to the idea, but I really need to not be living in our tiny apartment with the world’s tiniest kitchen and the world’s worst appliances. Seriously, 1 square foot of counter space, and a dryer that honestly takes around 5 hours to get a regular size load of laundry dry. Just what I need when I have a matter of a couple of hours a day to get anything and everything done. So the agreement was that we would go ahead with the building thing, but we had to have moved by the end of the year. Well, obviously that is not happening. 6 months in and we still don’t even have the drywall finished, with little to no explanation of why every stage is taking 3 times longer than we’re told it will. Building a house is not something I could ever recommend to anyone, and will definitely not be doing again.

On the understanding that we’d have moved by now, I starting working on some small projects for the house, so that we could actually make it feel like home when we moved in. One of the things I really wanted was a designated spot for keys, so I started looking on Etsy and found a bunch of picture frames that had been converted into key hooks. Since we’re spending (read: wasting!) all of this time getting the house done, I’m being very picky about styles and colors, and couldn’t find just the right one. So, in my usual fashion, I decided to do it myself. This is a pretty easy and quick project. The only time consuming part is waiting for the paint to dry. Of course, if you wanted a pin board instead of a chalkboard, it would be quicker again. Just take the glass out and then either add foam and fabric or cork, depending on the look you’re going for.

Bear in mind when you do this, that you’re painting on glass, so you’ll have to either use a primer, or use paint that will stick to the surface. My choice was to use multi-surface paint in place of a primer, since I have a couple of other projects that will need it. Just make sure the glass is really clean before you start.

Supplies:

Picture frame of required size (mine was 8×10)

Primer or multi-surface paint (skip if you use chalkboard paint for glass surfaces)

Chalkboard paint

Cup hooks (I used 1 1/4 inch)

Remove glass from frame. Clean thoroughly and cover with a coat of primer or your multi-surface paint. Allow to dry completely, then apply a second coat of paint, with brush strokes going in the opposite direction (horizontal if your last coat was vertical etc.), to ensure the glass is completely covered.

Repeat the 2 painting steps with chalkboard paint, making sure you let it dry completely between each coat, and you change the direction of the brush strokes on the second coat.

Measure the width of your frame, and make light marks at even spaces across for the number of hooks you want to use.

Screw in each hook, trying to keep them straight. You might need to use pliers for this, in which case be gentle so that you don’t bend the hooks.

Once the paint is completely dry, put the glass back in the frame.

That’s it! Now you have somewhere to hang your keys and leave messages in a place where they’re guaranteed to be seen.

If you give this a try, I’d love to see how it turned out! Stay tuned for more house-related projects, including the crocheted hanging basket to hold the chalk pens on one of the hooks.

Hurricane Harvey is officially on its way to the Texas coast. We’re stocked up on food and water, and have moved everything inside off of our balcony. So what’s left for me to do? Bake, of course!

As much as I love cake (and I mean, really really lovecake), I have a thing for savory breakfast food. Muffins are one of those wonderful things that you can make sweet or savory, and mix up with whatever flavors take your fancy. So, muffins seemed like the way to go. Since I’ve been trying to mature sure we have plenty of protein sources, I wanted to add some cottage cheese. Plus, I also really really love cheese! I modified a great looking recipe, mostly so that I could add more vegetables. I think this stems from when I was unemployed, and I found that I could stretch my budget by bulking up recipes with extra veggies, since they cost so much less than proteins. It also has the added bonus of hiding them in my husband’s food!

As muffins go, this is a pretty simple recipe: mix the wet ingredients, add the dry ingredients, add veggies, bake. I started with 2 slices of bacon, 1/2 a diced red onion, 1/2 a diced red bell pepper and around 1/2 cup of frozen corn. Cook the bacon for a few minutes to start rendering the fat, then add the onions and continue to cook until softened. Add the pepper and corn, and cook until the corn has thawed and heated through. Allow to cool.

Coming from England, I’ve never really had to deal with a severe weather emergency. We don’t get hurricanes, tornadoes or much like that, although flooding has been more of an issue in recent years. But here in Houston, it’s a different story. The roads seem to flood every time it rains, and there have been several tornadoes this year. Now, we’re facing a potential tropical storm, which might turn into a hurricane. So, in an effort to be prepared and organized, off to target the little man and I went in search of supplies in case of a few days without water or power.

Thankfully, we currently live on the 3rd floor, so it’s unlikely that we’ll have to evacuate because of flooding, but we’ll be packing a bag of clothes and filling up gas tanks just in case! More likely is that we’ll be stuck at home with no means of cooking and having to throw out all of the food from our fridge, and have no water. With that in mind, I figured that cartons of soup would be a good place to start, since they don’t need anything to open them and they can be eaten cold. They might not be that appetizing, but they’ll provide nutrients and liquid. I also stocked up on protein bars and protein-rich snacks, since they provide easy calories. While I don’t normally buy sweet snacks to keep at home, as a scientist I know that hormone shifts during the body’s stress response can limit the availability of glucose, which is essential to keep your brain working properly, so we opted for fruit snacks to provide some sugar when needed. Normally I make all of the little man’s baby food, but I didn’t want to count on our stocks surviving a power outage, so in to the cart went a few days worth of pre-made containers in varying flavors. When you pack these into the box, I recommend taking them all out of their boxes if they’re individually wrapped, since they take up less space this way.

So that plus a couple of cases of water should have us nutritionally taken care of for a few days. Then it came to the rest of the kit. Trash bags, not just to get rid of trash and keep the bugs out, but also in case a window gets broken. Flashlights, batteries, baby wipes to keep all of us clean (ish at least!), and of course duct tape, because what can’t be fixed with duct tape?! We have always kept a fully stocked first aid kit in the nursery along with plenty of hand sanitizer, but if we hadn’t I would have been stocking up on those too. Last but not least, a sturdy box with a water resistant seal to pack it all in, and we’re ready to go! Ok, not quite, but we definitely will be by the time the storm gets here on Friday. Wish us luck!

Now that my little man is 8 months old, we’re venturing into the world of finger food. More accurately, he is dragging us into it by insisting that the only way he’ll eat is if he can do it himself. Sadly, he’s not actually able to do it himself yet, so we’ve had to find some middle ground. This might be a few pieces of shredded cheese or some homemade baby puffs, or it might be pieces of anything else that’s soft enough for him to mash up but big enough to keep his hands busy.

My son is a very food motivated child, to the point where no-one else can eat in front of him without him screaming because he wants to eat too. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him do such a sad face as the day we went out to eat at a local diner and he saw a little boy running around with a pancake in each hand. Cue my quest to make baby safe pancakes!

When I first tried this recipe, he wasn’t able to eat wheat yet, and he still can’t have whole eggs. I have an oat pancake recipe that I love, so I started with that and tried to work out how to make it baby friendly. It turns out, baby pancakes really don’t need much at all. In fact, I make them with just 2 ingredients – ground oats and sweet potato! You could probably do this with any fruit or veggie puree you wanted, you just might need to adjust the quantity of oats depending on the water content.

For each ounce of sweet potato, I mix in 1 tbsp of ground oats. If you cook it in a non stick pan, you also don’t need any oil. Just spread the mixture in small rounds, about the thickness of a quarter. Cook over a low – medium heat for a few minutes. Once they start to look like they’ve dried out on the top, they’re ready to flip. Cook for another couple of minutes and there you have it – nutritious, baby-safe pancakes! If you keep these in the fridge they’ll be fine for over a week, I just warm them for a few seconds in the microwave when it’s pancake time.

I hope you and your little one enjoy these, and if you make them with something other than sweet potato, I’d love to hear how they come out!

Recently we’ve been making a lot of fruit and vegetable purees for a certain little man, and occasionally this means I end up with an extra 1 of something or other sitting around in my kitchen. This week, I had a leftover peach and a leftover mango. As I mentioned when I talked about meal planning, I like to roast meat on a Sunday and then use it in a few different ways throughout the week. This week, we roasted pork tenderloin with a spice rub. I was routing through the pantry while coming up with meal ideas for the week that would use up the pork, and I came across some slider buns that my husband had bought. Hmm… pork tenderloin, mango, peach, slider buns… Obviously I landed on making barbecue sauce (because who wouldn’t?!)

This is my first ever attempt at making my own barbecue sauce, and I also wish to point out that I am originally from England where we barbecue once a year if we’re lucky, so please forgive me if you look at the recipe and think “that’s not real barbecue sauce”. Feel free to call it whatever else you want if that name bothers you. This was made with a minimal number of ingredients, all of which could potentially be left out or substituted if you have something else that you want to use.

First of all, sweat a small, finely chopped onion down in a small amount of olive oil. Add a peeled and finely sliced 1 inch piece of ginger and 3-4 cloves of garlic, and cook for another 2-3 minutes until fragrant. Add the diced peach and mango and cook for around 15 minutes on a low heat until the fruit breaks down. This may be a shorter or longer time frame for you, depending on how ripe the fruit is. Add around 1/4 cup of apple cider vinegar, 1 tsp each of ground coriander, cumin and salt, and 1/2 tsp each of all spice and black pepper. Add 1/2 – 1 tsp chili paste (or don’t, if you don’t like it) and cook for a few more minutes to incorporate all the flavors. Blend until smooth, and return to the pan. Simmer for around 30 minutes, adjusting the acid and sweetness level with more vinegar and either agave, maple syrup or brown sugar according to your personal taste. Add around 1 tsp of lime juice. Let it cool and it’s ready to go!

I hope you enjoy this. If you try this, especially if you try it with other ingredients, please let me know how it turns out!

Coffee has been something of a necessity for me for many many years now. It’s truly a miracle that I manage to get anything done without it. I tried to go completely decaf during pregnancy, and in all fairness I made it to about 3 pm. Admittedly, that was actually “scraping through to 3 pm wondering why I’ve been completely useless all day” making it. So not really… However, despite my absolute requirement for coffee, I couldn’t stomach iced coffee at all until a couple of years ago when I discovered a far too unhealthy caramel, chocolate and cream laden concoction at a local cafe. Since then, I have discovered the wonder of all manner of frappucinos and cold brews. I will say that I need extra flavor in my cold coffee, especially if it comes with ice cubes. However strong the coffee is, you lose so much flavor by having it cold. So, I was far too excited when I found out about the coconut cold brew at starbucks. Toasted coconut syrup and coconut milk in a cold brew? Yes please!

I don’t often go out for coffee these days. It’s typically only after my Saturday morning yoga class. A couple of weeks ago I left class all excited about my coconut cold brew, and was even feeling nice enough to pick one up for my husband too. I got them home along with a couple of breakfast sandwiches, and was so excited to dive in. It was unbelievable… But sadly, not in a good way. It tasted of absolutely nothing. No coconut flavor. No coffee flavor. Just watery, but still headache-inducing, brown stuff. Total waste of money.

However, the excitement of what that coffee could (and should) have been, wouldn’t go away. So, I decided to have a go at making it myself. Since it’s a cold brew, it does take time. But it’s totally worth it. And an extra tip – instead of putting ice cubes into your coffee, freeze undrunk coffee in ice cube trays and put those in your coffee instead. That way, you won’t water it down, and the flavor will stay nice and strong.

I like to make the coffee the night before. Use your regular amount of coffee, put it in a french press with water and put it in the fridge overnight until you’re ready to drink it. Next comes the syrup. Dissolve half a cup of sugar in half a cup of water over a low heat. At the same time, toast half a cup of unsweetened coconut until golden. Add the coconut and 1/2 teaspoon coconut extract or essence (if using) to the syrup, remove from the heat and leave for 3-4 hours to infuse the syrup with the coconut flavor. Strain and reserve the coconut.

Normally we have coconut milk in the pantry, but I guess I used it all when I was cooking, so I decided to make toasted coconut milk! Rinse the coconut to remove any remaining syrup (otherwise your coconut milk will be very sweet) and add to a blender with 1 cup water. Blend until smooth and strain to remove the coconut pulp, squeezing to make sure you get all of the milk out. And you’re ready to go!

I don’t sweeten my hot coffee (with the exception of my December peppermint mocha obsession), but I find I need around 3 teaspoons of syrup in a large cold brew to get the flavor, and this syrup is no exception. Next I plan to try out some other flavors of syrup, so I’ll post the recipes when I have them figured out. Enjoy!

DIY Coconut Cold Brew Coffee

For the coffee:

Coffee

Water

French press

For the syrup:

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup water

1/2 cup unsweetened coconut flakes

1/2 tsp coconut extract or essence (optional)

For the coconut milk:

Toasted coconut (from syrup)

1 cup water

To make the coffee: Put your usual amount of coffee in the french press and fill with water. Leave to brew in the fridge overnight.